After the Accident, Just Who’s in Charge Here?

Somewhere out there--probably in Orange County--is a man who at 10 a.m. on Aug. 24 ran up the back of a woman at high speed on his bicycle on the Santa Ana River trail near Pacific Coast Highway.

He may or may not be interested to know that the name of the woman he struck is Molly Peukert, that she’s an Orange County school psychologist, and that her injuries were extensive, painful and expensive to repair. Peukert and her husband, psychologist Joseph Kawaja, have spent a great deal of time and effort over the past 4 months trying to discover the identity of this man. They want him to be held accountable for the consequences of his own reckless actions.

Peukert had no warning of the disaster that struck her that warm summer morning. She and her family live two blocks from the Hamilton Street entrance to the Santa Ana River trail in Huntington Beach. It was her custom to take a long walk on the trail each Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. On this Wednesday, she was accompanied by her 18-year-old daughter, Becky, on summer vacation from her studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

The two had been walking for about an hour toward the ocean, talking and enjoying the salt air. The path--part dirt, part asphalt--was broad enough to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists going in both directions. A number of bicycles passed them without incident as they walked. Then--without even a microsecond of noise to warn her--Peukert was struck from behind by a bicycle that ran the length of her body before it overturned several yards up the path.

Peukert went down as if she had been pole-axed, her face embedded in the asphalt. “I don’t think I lost consciousness,” she recalls today, “but I had no idea what had happened. There was blood all over, and I remember trying to get up, but Becky rolled me over, told me to stay down, and held my head in her lap.”

A passing cyclist who came on the accident right after it happened said he would go for help and pedaled off. Becky asked another passing cyclist to do the same. While this was going on, both mother and daughter remember that the cyclist who had struck Peukert was standing about 15 feet away, saying over and over, “I didn’t see you, I didn’t see you.” There was a child in a baby carrier on the rear of his bike, and Becky recalls him consoling the child, who apparently was neither thrown out nor hurt.

This strange tableau continued--Becky comforting her mother, the bike rider who hit her standing off silently at a distance and passers-by stopping to help--until the paramedics and a truck from the Huntington Beach Fire Department arrived on the scene. Before Becky climbed in the ambulance with her mother, she was concerned about getting a full report on the accident and the name of the man who had struck her mother. She says she was assured by the fire captain that a full report would be made when the police arrived, and he would wait there for them.

What happened after that has been partially pieced together over the past 4 months by Kawaja after numerous calls and visits to the various police agencies involved. According to Kawaja, when the Huntington Beach police arrived, they told the people awaiting them this was out of their jurisdiction, asked their dispatcher to notify the California Highway Patrol--and split, without getting the names of witnesses or the cyclist who struck Molly Peukert.

But apparently the CHP never arrived. Officer Jill Angel at the CHP, after lengthy investigation, said that the CHP did not get involved in the matter, that it is outside their jurisdiction and that they would not have responded for that reason, suggesting that possibly the Orange County Sheriff’s Department had been called. Officer Donna Soto at that department said they had no record of the case and in any event would have responded only to a “medical situation” because this is Huntington Beach’s jurisdiction. And the Huntington Beach Fire Department, which was apparently still on the scene when the police departed, offered no help either. A spokesman told me: “Everything that happens after the police arrive is strictly a police matter. Our report goes only up to the time the victim was taken away in the ambulance.”

Only the Huntington Beach Police Department had a record of the accident, and when I asked them why they had left the scene without getting any names or waiting until some other police agency arrived, Capt. Donald Jenkins of the Traffic Division told me: “When our officers arrived, the man was still there, being treated by the Fire Department. Since the matter was clearly out of our jurisdiction, our officers called the CHP, were told they would respond and departed. The cyclist was still there when our men left, and we told him to wait there for the CHP.”

Did he consider this proper procedure? “Yes. The actions of our officers involved no violation of law or of department policies. We had no idea how serious the victim’s injuries were . . . they might have amounted to a scuffed knee.”

Here’s what Capt. Jenkins’ “scuffed knee” added up to, according to Peukert: one tooth knocked out and three others that will have to be replaced; 60 stitches in the facial area, mostly around the mouth; multiple bruises and scrapes; still undetermined injuries to the whole right side, including an elbow that hasn’t healed, and extensive oral surgery that can’t be done until Peukert’s mouth has healed.

“I can’t get her near the trail she loved so much,” says her husband, “and just last week she started taking walks again--around our block.”

Perhaps this article can do what police bureaucracy failed to do. If the man who struck Molly Peukert would like to come forward, Kawaja would like to hear from him (his number is in the phone book). He would also like to hear from anyone who witnessed the accident--or knows someone who did--and might have the cyclist’s identity.

Beyond that, there appear to be two morals to this story. First, the bicycle--especially when it is coming up from behind--can be a lethal weapon, and both pedestrians and cyclists need to be more aware of this. And, second, if you’re going to have an accident, don’t do it on the Santa Ana River trail. Apparently, in this stretch at least, there’s nobody home.